


The Howling Commandos weren’t homophobic, surprisingly

by PerplexinglyParadoxialPerson



Series: The stories of the Captain America needs a hug hashtag [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Awesome Howling Commandos, Established Relationship, Fluff, Howling Commandos - Freeform, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Storytelling, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 18:16:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20394040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerplexinglyParadoxialPerson/pseuds/PerplexinglyParadoxialPerson
Summary: Dum Dum shows his gay granddaughter that despite being old, he isn’t homophobic.





	The Howling Commandos weren’t homophobic, surprisingly

Sara was nervous. She had just finished a unit in history class about World War Two and the howling commandos, that made going to a family reunion with her grandpa Timothy Dugan really weird. Once supper had been started and she had grabbed her plate of food, she sat down inside, unlike most of the family. 

After she had started eating her grandpa sat down beside her saying “any boyfriends yet Sara, if I had to guess I bet you’re beating them off with a stick” 

She laughed “Your family, you’re supposed to think I’m irresistible and besides,” she said more cautiously “if I had anyone it wouldn’t be a boyfriend it would be a girlfriend. This better not be a problem!”

“Huh” he said leaning forwards “I really should have expected that at least one of my grandkids would be gay.”

“You... you don’t care?” She said, eyes wide “but you’re old!”

He laughed “I’m not that old sweetie, and besides, gay people did exist back then though it was a lot harder for them than nowadays.”

“Oh” she said feeling stupid “I didn’t think about that. Who... who did you know that was gay?”

“Well” he said with a sad smile “let me tell you a story. So you said that you just finished a unit on the Howlies right?”

“Yeah”

“Ok, well it started in Azzano, all of us Howlies excluding Agent Carter and Cap were in the same cage and after a while we started talking about girls back home. Once all the rest of us had gone, someone asked Bucky if he had a girl back home. He had never said anything about a girl before, but he started talking ‘her names Stevie’ he had said ‘stunning blue eyes, hair like sunshine, short and skinny, but a real firecracker. She’s my best friend, full of more fight than an alley cat, and if she sees any injustice she has to jump in and right it despite usually being a head shorter and a buck lighter than the person she fights and has athsma to boot.’ It was so easy to see how much he adored her. Later on, he got taken by the scientists to be experimented on, and a few days later in walks Captain America, rescuing us, and then he’s asking where Bucky is, we send him in the right direction once he got us out of the cages and when we started walking to the nearest base, Bucky walks up and introduces Captain America to us as his best friend Steve.”

“Wait a second” she said slowly, nose wrinkled in confusion “Steve was really small and had a bunch of diseases including athsma before the serum right, and had blue eyes and blond hair right?”

“Yep” he said with a grin, the wrinkles around his eyes getting deeper, “according to Bucky they had been together since their mid teens.”

“Wait so not only was Captain America gay, but he was in a steady relationship with Sergeant Barnes!” She exclaimed “this is the coolest thing I’ve learned about history ever!”

He grinned and said “Your right mostly, but Steve and Bucky were together, not Captain America and Sergeant Barnes. Do you want me to tell you how we found out?”  
“Yeah” she said leaning forwards “you didn’t figure it out from that?” 

“Well I didn’t” he replied with a wry smile“but some of the others probably figured it out quickly, in retrospect it was pretty obvious, they even shared a tent!” He smiled and added air quotes “because ‘he didn’t need that much space’ and ‘it would be warmer that way’. Honestly I didn’t want to put it together. I was about as homophobic as they come back then.”

“So you saw what you wanted to see.” She said with a mouthful of food.

“Yep” he said “but it really came out when Steve got a grenade to the gut when we got ambushed behind enemy lines. He was lucky, if it wasn’t for the shield he would have gotten some fragments to the chest, and probably would have had some in his heart. Anyway, so he got hit and screamed and the next thing I know Bucky is sprinting towards him from halfway across the field, grabbed the shield from his arms and defended him. The moment there weren’t any more to protect him from he threw the shield down and started talking to him. All of us ran over there as fast as we could once we were safe. We started making a stretcher to carry him to camp for proper surgery, when Bucky yelled that he was healing around the fragments in his gut. We all had to help, and the whole time Bucky was talking to him, telling him to stay awake, that he would be just fine, and called him sweet names, darling and doll, sweetheart, sugar and sunshine. Called him every sappy name in the book. It was really easy to tell that they were romantically involved.”

“Wow” Sara said eyes wide “was Steve ok? I mean, of course he was, he died later, but...”

“Don’t worry I get it, he was fine, didn’t even get a scar.”

“That super serum is no joke” she said awed “but you said you were really homophobic back then, how did you change?”

“Well back then I thought that being gay was a sickness. I also believed that it was impossible for a guy to be romantically attracted to another guy. Since the serum cured Steve of all the illnesses he had and didn’t get sick any more, that was out, and they so obviously adored each other, more than what I saw of how much my parents loved each other. It took a while but they had each saved my life too many times to count and I felt I owed it to them to at least not turn them in, and eventually I figured that a love that strong couldn’t be wrong.”

“What were they like as a couple? Like were they lovey dovey all the time or...”

He laughed and said “well they argued all the time, but they always made up and never held grudges against each other. They were also very protective of each other, in fact, while I was figuring myself out they both came up to me individually and told me that I could turn them in, insult or hurt them all I wanted but to not dare to hurt the other. That actually helped convince me that it wasn’t wrong.”

“Wow, that must have been pretty crazy!”

“Yeah” he said “most of their arguments were about keeping the other safe, not to do stupid things, and division of food! Cause Steve needed a lot more food than most because of the serum and he got guilty about it.” 

She couldn’t help a laugh “that sounds so annoying.”

“It was” he replied “we actually started calling them mom and pops and we would even sometimes called Bucky mother bear Barnes, he fussed over Steve, and to a lesser extent us, so much. That’s actually how Bucky Bears came to exist, we called him that in the hearing range of Howard Stark, and he had someone make the first one as a joke, but Senator Brandt figured that it would be profitable so...”

“Huh” she said, sitting back “that’s a really interesting origin story. After I grab some dessert can you tell me any more stories?”

“Of course sweetie” he said “as long as you grab me one of your dads chocolate chip cookies for me”

“Of course” she said and gathered their empty plates.

———— 

Returning with a small plate of desserts she asked “what other stories do you have”

He grabbed a cookie from the plate and said “let’s see, one time we were helping the French resistance and as we were going across the countryside we came across a broken down church in an abandoned town. When we explored it we found lots of wine. We all got pretty tipsy and somehow decided that we would hold a wedding for Steve and Bucky in the old church. They agreed to it and when we woke up they held us to our word. They exchanged dog tags and flipped a coin for who would be the one to go down the aisle. Peggy gave Steve away and was Steve’s best lady, Gabe officiated because he was the only one of us that went to college, and the rest of us flipped coins for who would be who’s groomsmen. It was a bit ridiculous, but they said that they considered it valid.”

“Aww!” She said, smiling “I think that’s the cutest thing I’ve ever heard! But... why didn’t you tell anyone? It would have been great for gay rights!” 

“Well” he said with a sad smile, “I’m sure you’ve seen ads and campaigns for all sorts of things that have Captain America in them right?”

“Yeah”

“Well at this point Captain America is a character like Uncle Sam, not a person. I think the army even owns the rights to the name and image of Captain America. Besides it wasn’t Captain America and Sergeant Barnes that were in love, it was Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes. You kids get it better than most, because you got the stories from me, not the comics and propaganda. You could tell people, I just doubt that they would believe you.”

“Oh” she said, face falling “I guess you’re right. I definitely won’t keep it a secret, I mean if anyone asks my opinion on that kind of thing I’ll definitely share the story, but I won’t tell everyone I meet either.”

“Smart choice sweetie” he said with a grin “now give me a hug and get out of here, it looks like you’re parents are heading out.”

“Ok” she said standing up and giving him a hug, “I’ll get going but next time I see you can you tell me more stories about them?”

“Of course” he replied as she started towards the door. “See you soon!”

**Author's Note:**

> So I will probably eventually write something about most of the events mentioned, possibly in a one shot series, but it might take a while.
> 
> Also I could use some advice on inserting images that I made, made some profile pictures for the next part, but can’t figure out how to put them in.
> 
> Hey this is my first writing piece to go from first to last draft, so if you have questions, constructive criticism, or tags I should add please comment!


End file.
